Lifelines
by Dragon's Daughter 1980
Summary: You're going to see the worst because you're one of the best. Don't let the Job break you.


Lifelines

Author: Dragon's Daughter 1980

Disclaimer: NBC and Mr. Wolf have complete ownership over the Law & Order shows. That being said, I'm just borrowing the cast for my own enjoyment and I promise to return all characters unharmed.

Author's Note: I've only occasionally watched L&O:SVU, so I'm not completely sure about the canon. Thus, I beg your indulgence of any errors (and drop me a note about them). Thank you. Now, please, enjoy.

* * *

Many people knew of the case, but most of them never cared enough to connect the dots to see the picture. A selective few did, either because she couldn't help it, or she trusted them with her life, or she used it to purposefully break down the barriers between a civilian and an officer.

"You're _what_?"

On the rare slow days, she sometimes drifts off into the past. Then she still can hear the echo of her high school friend's surprised voice when she announced her ambition to join the NYPD. She still can see the shocked expression, the wide disbelieving eyes and slightly open mouth of her friend, trying to absorb the news. While she's reluctant to confess to it, she knows that very few people, having gone through what she's been through, would have the strength to do what she does every day. Some days, she herself isn't sure she's made the right decision.

On those days, when a case is more horrific than the rest, when the ghosts won't leave her be, she unlocks the bottom drawer of her desk. She's heard somewhere that people, by some instinct, always put what is most valuable to them in the bottom drawers of a desk. It feels right, she concedes, before she smiles wryly and wonders what Huang would think of that statement. Her bottom drawer contains only two items, both of them heavy, and she never takes them out when the squad room is full. This is too private for her to share with her coworkers, her friends. Maybe some day, but not now.

She hadn't started out with the intent of doing what she now did weekly. But time and experience have taught her better. She remembers when she was still a rookie, when she was walking the beat in Central Park. It hadn't been easy with her good looks, sometimes, to fend off those who had a little too much to drink or were a little too desperate for company to ignore the crisply-pressed blue uniform. Her regular partner, Whittaker, had been ill one day and she was paired up with Jameson, a six-year beat cop on his way up the ladder. She had been upset that particular day; why? She no longer remembers, but she's fairly sure it must have been a case that was too close to home or maybe it involved a child. She's seen too many cases of that kind to remember them all clearly now. Jameson had asked what was wrong, and when he heard her answer, well, she can still hear his quiet, reassuring drawl in her mind.

"_We see people at the worst times in their lives; it's our job to help get them through it. It's not easy and it's not pretty. It's not supposed to be. If there's one thing you've got to do for yourself, it's that you've got to remember the triumphs. You're bright and you'll go far — the Serge's been real complimentary about your work — so you've got to prepare yourself. You're going to see nasty things, what people can do to other people, and you're not going to forget them. But if you don't want the job to break you, I suggest you start a collection of good endings, people you've helped, cases that ended well. We don't see enough of those these days."_

She had taken his advice to heart. The collection she held in her hands now had started out as loose bits of paper — letters, notes, memos, pictures — and stray photographs hidden in a mess in her bottom drawer. With the rapid pace of cases, she never had the time to sort things out. Then, after her first shooting, when she was on leave, she had forced herself to find the time to organize those good memories, to block out the blood-splattered nightmares that haunted her sleep. She had purchased a large emerald green leather scrapbook with a plain gold decorative boarder and spent her days pouring over the letters, slipping the photographs into protective pockets until she could remember each person, smiling at her because they were no longer at the worst times of their lives, because she had helped them through it.

Eventually, she had started adding photographs of her coworkers. Even though she's never socialized much, she still goes to the bars to drink with the boys and the parties because they're required and there's always someone with a camera there. So she has pictures of Fin and Munch in party hats, Elliot smiling his mysterious and cynical smile when she's not looking, hell, even the Captain with a drink in his hand and a slightly cross-eyed look at the camera with his arm around his wife. There's Alex, with her long blond hair and wry smile, before she disappeared from their lives. More recently, pictures of Casey, looking relaxed at the NYPD's Christmas Ball. She sighs. Casey has had big shoes to fill, and she knows that she has perhaps been slightly hostile when it wasn't warranted. Casey has done a good job, and as the number of cases they work together continues to grow, she hopes her friendship with the new ADA will strengthen too.

The heaviness of the volume is reassuring in her lap, rather than restricting. She smiles as she flips through the pages — handwritten letters, crayon pictures, Polaroid snapshots of birthday parties with happy faces — until she comes to the last incomplete page. She opens the protective plastic covering before she turns to the white envelope on her desk. She unfolds the personal letter that came addressed to her today through departmental mail. It's a child's careful scrawl that begins: _Dear Detective Benson, _A smile comes to her face, even through she doesn't finish rereading the letter. She carefully spreads out the letter on the page and fishes out the picture that accompanied it. It's a young girl with long brunette hair — Tiffany, she recalls — who is hugging a golden retriever. Both child and pet have a flushed energetic air around them. As she puts the photograph next to the letter and smoothes the protective covering over them, she remembers when she had first met the brave girl. Tiffany had been trapped in a closet by her stepmother's body for nearly a day after a home invasion went horribly wrong. The last she had heard of the girl was that the child was moving upstate to live with an aunt and uncle. From the looks of Tiffany now, it had been the right choice.

She closes the book, puts it on her desk and folds her arms across it so she can rest her chin on her arms. In that position, she's on eye-level with the framed photograph she has on her desk. This month, it's the picture of two brown-eyed sisters, hugging each other, beaming at the camera, being children, instead of survivors of a horrible case. She changes the picture on her desk from time to time; her colleagues know better than to ask. They either know the case or know that it's just how she copes with what they see every day.

She glances at the clock and sighs. It's seven on a Friday night. She should go, before anyone pops in and sees her still at her desk. She doesn't want word to reach the Captain or else he'll start kicking her out of the office at the end of the day before he leaves. So she puts the book back in its spot, tidies up her desk, picks up what she needs and takes one last look at that photograph of the smiling sisters before she turns out the lights and leaves the empty squad room.

She'll be back at her desk on Monday, or sooner. And she hopes that whatever case she encounters will add another letter, another photo, another good memory to her book.


End file.
